Roman Catholics: The Master Builder

Short and amiably unprepossessing, the man who sat in the great episcopal throne of St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1939 was hardly the image of a bishop, let alone the archbishop of the vast Archdiocese of New York. "I shall pray as if everything depended upon God," he said when he assumed his office. "I shall work as if everything depended on me." And so seriously did he take his vow — so firmly did he place his mark on American Catholicism — that when he died of a stroke in Manhattan last...